All of a sudden, no network at home for any of the devices, wired or WiFi; reboot the modem, it would come back for about 30 seconds and then disappear. This sort of thing has happened four times in the past, and it’s always been traced to somebody in billing at my DSL provider¹ deciding to switch me to a different circuit further away from my house and crapifying my signal.

Today, however, the tech support drone decides it’s my modem and I need a new one. This declaration came:

1. Just as my signal cleared up and got stable again, which coincided with
2. Me finishing describing my problem, and
3. Reading off the serial number of my modem, which to be fair is sorta old

So I’m gonna get a new modem because it’s probably time and a new one hopefully has a more securely patched chipset inside.

But I’m still pissed off because tech support drone told me he could offer me a US$20 discount on a $US59.99 modem, for a total of US$49.99. I pointed out his math was dodgy. He told me he could give me another discount on a different network plan. I used some bad words internally and told him to just send me the damn thing. No email confirming the order yet either, which absolutely guaranteed means he spelled my name wrong in the email address.

How’s your day going? Let’s talk about something more pleasant.

We mentioned the somewhat circuitous nature of film options last week in the context of Ursula Vernon² and Hamster Princess, noting that just because an option’s been obtained doesn’t mean anything is happening soon. I think the land speed record for option ==> movie in comic land is Scott Pilgrim, and even that took about 3-4 years³. I bring this all up because of some immensely good news that broke yesterday:

Looks like the news is out: Amulet will be a live-action movie, hopefully a series. Looking forward to this. http://deadline.com/2015/11/amulet-kazu-kibuishi-fox-temple-hill-graphic-novel-1201617398/ …

Firstly, there couldn’t be a better property to make a movie out of than Amulet, and live action is going to rule; congrats to Kazu Kibuishi and all his collaborators. Secondly, this did not happen overnight. One may recall (if one has a sufficient memory) that the option for Amulet was first obtained in 2008 (when the plan was for Will Smith to produce and his kids to star).

The Deadline story describes this in terms of X will happen, but so did the Variety story from 2008, so either this is Amulet moving to the next stage of production (which may falter or progress, we’ll all see together), or maybe it’s not closer to being a movie than it was eight and a half years ago. It’s definitely a paycheck for Kibuishi (the 2008 announcement was at Warner Bros and this one is at Fox, so the old option expired, a new one was obtained, and Kazu gets to do the I got paid twice happy dance), so that’s all right.

Thirdly, note the use of the word franchise in that story; with the right cast, the right director, and the right vision, this could be the next Harry Potter. That being said, if some studio dipshit decides that a girl can’t be the central character and changes Emily to a boy, I’m burning down Hollywood, so you best respect the source material, Fox. I’ve got my eye on you. In the meantime, I’ll be over here waiting for the seventh volume of Amulet, due in Feburary.

Okay, going to wrap it here, on the off chance that my network gets stupid again. See you tomorrow, I hope.

Spam of the day:

Predicted In The Sacred Book of Revelation – Obama’s Deadly Curse The massive downfall that willwipe out 49 out of 50 American states … And unfortunately you won’t make it out alive, because what’s coming has the devil sign on it.

Since I won’t make it out alive, I suppose I’ll spend my time wondering which is the heaven-blessed 50th state that survives. I hope it’s something completely unexpected, like Rhode Island, or maybe just the upper peninsula of Michigan.

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¹ Rhymes with Morizon.

² Reminder: I loves me some Digger

³ Unless you want to count The Martian as comic land due to Any Weir’s history as a webcomicker. Bit of a stretch, actually.

So this is gonna have to be brief.

• Speaking of crazed rodents, Ryan North and Erika Henderson’s Squirrel Girl continues to charm all and sundry (including me, and I loathe those brush-tailed little terrorists), and to push into every corner of the popular consciousness. Case in point: a statistics assignment being offered up today. I can’t recall ever getting a statistics test/homework problem that mentioned Squirrel Girl, Chipmunk Hunk, and Koi Boi, so point to Stephen Davidson from The Internet for making life a little more absurd for his students.
• Speaking of statistics, Matt Nolan is back with the complete Numberwang on Oh Joy, Sex Toy’s second Kickstart. I realize that not all creators are comfortable with sharing data like this and some actively object to the notion that they should; I would never advocate that it be required, but man I love digging into numbers, and the value to the next crop of creators in planning their own crowdfunding efforts is impossible to overstate. Many thanks to Nolan for providing the data and the learning opportunity; more thanks to Nolan and Erika Moen for making sweet, sweet love to the internet every week with OJST.
• Speaking of nothing in particular, turns out I’m not the only one that’s having problems getting San Diego Comic Con to issue press credentials with anything approaching functionality. For the record, I still haven’t heard back from the inquiry I made to SDCC press reg email last month, nor have I received any replies on the process I began a year ago to get credentialed for 2015. I have received an offer from another comics news outlet that believes it will be able to provide me with access (they bring stringers each year, so this is legit), for which I am grateful. We pixel-stained wretches helping each other out doesn’t change the fact that the SDCC press reg process is broken, and the people running it are bad at their jobs.

Spam of the day:

Stephanie’s 145-Pound Weight Loss

If I get on Stephanie’s miracle diet, I will mass negative six kilos. Pass.

This is going to be brief, because it stands alone nicely. Mark V dropped me an email over the weekend to make sure I saw a blogpost from Darrin Bell of Candorville¹ on the topic of working for exposure. Let us remind ourselves momentarily of the Stevens Rule: People die of exposure², and then enjoy Bell’s decision to tell the Huffington Post to go pound sand:

I’ve been “Huffed” too. Five years ago, I noticed they’d written an article transcribing a Candorville strip. They repeated it word for word, and described the action. I wrote to the author and asked why they didn’t just pay to run the cartoon itself, or at the very least link to the cartoon on my website (not that that would’ve been a good substitute for payment, but at least it wouldn’t have been a kick in the slap in the face). I sent them the contact info for my syndicate. Instead of licensing it, they simply –- immediately –- deleted the article.

But lots of people find themselves in that position, sadly; what made Bell’s post worthwhile was the story of how he learned to never work for free, because of an object lesson he received from his godmother at the age of thirteen. I’m not going to copy it here — follow the link above and read the entire thing, it’s not long — but I wanted you to see it because it can never be said too often: your creative work has value. Honestly, we ought to make that lesson a little more compact, but for some reason those that don’t value your work get pissy when you tell them Fuck you, pay me.

Gotta clean out the spam filters, they’re piling up. Time for the Spam of the day lightning round!

Hey, Missed e-mails phenomenally

Liar.

©GOOGLE E-MAIL LOTTERY PROMOTION INETRNATIONAL LOTTERY SECTION (E) SPAIN 2015. Attn: Winner

Enormous liar.

Chat with 20000 Russian and Ukrainian Beauties

While your stock photos are enticing, I don’t believe you.

55+ And Looking For An Apartment in Your Area? Click here!

I am not a senior citizen.

Your Account Has Been Limited PayPal ID PP-658-119-347

I don’t have a PayPal account.

Browse Profiles of Local Jewish Singles at JDate

I’m married. Also not Jewish, unless selling my soul to Rosenberg includes a retroactive transitive bar mitzvah.

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¹ Those of you who’ve seen STRIPPED know that he gets a lot of screen time, because he’s got a lot of smart, interesting things to say. The hivemind made up of Fred Schroeder and Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett chose well in making him one of the central voices in the film.

² And its corollary: when the work has already been run by somebody that assumed you’d be fine with exposure, the proper response is I don’t care that you took it down, you ran it already and that costs money; my invoice is on its way.

Working outside them, finding places that can be them.

• So if there’s one thing that I’m deeply conflicted on, it’s pointing out failures to fulfill Kicstarter rewards. I’m not talking about obvious scams or people that clearly have no idea what they’re doing; I’m talking about people who have the ability to create what they say they’re going to create, have every intention of making good, and then things happen.

  Sometimes, it’s out of their control. Sometimes it’s reach exceeding grasp. I’ve got one promised reward that I know I’m never going to see and I’ll never mention it to the creators (who are friends of mine) because it’s honestly not worth the headache.

  But sometimes it’s impossible to not talk about; case in point, the very prominent, very high-funded Kickstart from Strip Search alum Lexxy Douglass that started towards its stated goals, almost immediately stalled, and unexpected revived:

  After a two year hiatus, page 008 of The Cloud Factory is up http://tmblr.co/ZnogBy1xWW3Tv

  At a certain point, no matter what kept you from fulfilling, even when those obstacles seem less and progress could be made, the thought of going back to something that you publicly promised and didn’t make good on when you said you would … you end up with the makings of the most vicious of circles.

  This unfinished page has been one of the biggest obstacles in my repeated attempts to resume the project.

  There’s more at the Tumblr; go read it. It must have been tough for Douglass to write, and she’s not making any promise about a defined schedule for future updates. From the outside, she seems to be staring directly into the classic dilemma of being so swept up into worldbuilding and backstory and design that the actual production fails to match up to internal expectations and keeps getting pushed back.

  I wonder how many intricately-plotted stories exist in the world, locked away in imaginations and never making it to the page¹? If nothing else, let’s try to remember that behind every well-intentioned crowdfunded campaign, there’s a person there feeling the weight of expectations. Even the best handled campaigns must be stressful out of all reasonable measure.

• How about a less fraught story to send you out on the weekend? I knew this was coming on account of how at the end of TopatoCon, the TopatoCo store that I worked (alongside the legendary Ferocious J, under the guidance of Agent Paperklip) was, per the direction of TopatoCo Vice President Of Kicking Your Ass Holly Rowland, not torn down and packed out at the end of the show.

  The decision was made to leave the store stocked, and run it through the holidays for the benefit and convenience of Pioneer Valley locals. The shopping season begins tomorrow and runs past even the worst New Year’s hangover. Go nuts.

Spam of the day:

You have deferred notifications traitor
With many thanks, Facebook team
I’m honestly not sure if I’m more offended by the notion that I’ve committed treason, or that I have a Facebook account.

_______________
¹ And if my memory serves me, this is still the extent of ongoing story that she’s produced so far; she’s an amazing illustrator, but as I noted during her time on Strip Search, her ability to craft and pace a story is still unknown.

Along those same lines, Kickstarts like hers — intended to fund time to create something — have become markedly less popular of late, and remain inherently risky for both backers (who can easily end up feeling burned) and creators (who can kill the goodwill of their fans).

So I was surprised to see that a high-goal campaign launched the other day along exactly those lines. Jake Parker’s a known quantity as a creator, but if something comes up that derails his ambitious production schedule? SkyHeart could become the next Cloud Factory and nobody wants that.

You’d think after doing this for nearly 10 years, I’d have a better feel for when work was gonna get in the way. Then again, my match says this is the 2663rd posting I’ve made on this here blog, meaning I’ve posted about 73% of the days since launch, so I’m not gonna beat myself up too much over it. Here’s that big news that I promised you.

• I’m assuming that you’ve all seen the big interview with Kate Beaton running at The Comics Journal? It was started at SPX (a place as formative to Kate Beaton, Internet Cartoonist as Cape Breton is to Kate Beaton, Alive Human) and gives a nice recap of how she simultaneously got to be the favorite cartoonist of those who love comics and those who are completely indifferent to comics.

  Personally, I was struck by how things happened for Beaton both very quickly and very slowly — she bounced around between the Maritimes, Vancouver, the Alberta tar sands, and Toronto, becoming a huge deal in webcomics circles while simultaneously isolated from the community. The success of her first pieces of merchandise brought her quickly to full-time pro status, but at the same time she went back to Fort McMurray and the tool crib to retire student loan debt. She exploded in popularity at that time, with her ballpoint-on-printer-paper drawings¹ — uploaded at night from the middle of an environmental moonscape — capturing something in all our hearts, and then found herself an Official Big Deal with her return to the faster pace of metropolitan life.

  See also: her entry into childrens books took a couple of years from suggestion to pitch to launch, and some of her best work comes about from leaving the speed of urban life for the sedate pace of Nova Scotia (cf: any of her family comics). She’s a pile of contradictions, then; she contains multitudes, all of them funny, insightful, charming, adorable. Go read it.

• The other big news I wanted to make sure you all saw came from The Hollywood Reporter; it’s been a while since Ursula Vernon did webcomics on the regular², what with all the kids lit she’s writing, and the modern takes on fairy tales and fantasy, and the podcasting on disturbing events/disturbing food, and all the rest. So maybe you didn’t notice that one of her books got optioned for film by an obscure sometimes voice actor:
  

  Disney has optioned the movie rights to Castle Hangnail, a children’s book by Ursula Vernon, for an adaptation to be produced by Ellen DeGeneres.

  So that’s all right. As noted on this page on several previous occasions, an option doesn’t mean that Vernon is now rolling in huge piles of money; it doesn’t even mean that a movie will get made anytime soon or at all. Lots of things can happen between now and some nebulous point in the future, particularly if Degeneres and Disney decide to go the animated route ’cause dang, that takes time. But it means that Vernon’s more on the radar of the deep-pocketed entertainment industry, that other studios may try to lock up rights to her other works in case Castle Hangnail becomes a monster hit, and each of those things means the possibility of less financial wobbliness than is usually found in the indy comics/indy writer career path.

  Vernon celebrated the announcement by welcoming a new rescued dog into her household and threatening a hack webcomics pseudojournalist who smarted off at her on Twitter. Honestly, she’s probably happier about identifying a new moth in her garden than anything else in the last week, which means she’s unlikely to go the coke and hookers route of other suddenly successful people; Fleen congratulates Vernon on not letting Hollywood change her.

Spam of the day:

****Second email notice***** Sequel to your non response of our earlier letter sent by post to you by to you on behalf of the Trustees and Executors of the Estate of our late client.

Been getting a lot more of these scams lately; bonus points for this actually being a second email and being signed by the same fake lawyer (who claims to be from Zurich but has a Russian character in the middle of his Germanic name and give a UK phone number).

______________
¹ As Los Angeles resident Dave Kellett, her choice of topic (literature, history), posting schedule (irregular), posting location (Livejournal), and drawing materials should have killed any chance of success, but her style, humo[u]r, and raw skill overcame those presumed handicaps.

² As always, I loves me some Digger.

The world’s neediest class and a new furnace installation have robbed me of all time today, which is a shame because there’s stuff I wanted to talk about. Tomorrow, promise.

In all other respects I generally agree with him, but I am firm in this: feta is gross and its presence on an otherwise-delicious pizza is just wrong. I’m getting ahead of myself, we’ll come to that bit later.

• It’s been maybe six weeks since David Morgan-Mar (PhD, LEGO®©™^etc and semi-pro Mr Bean impersonator) announced that he was taking legal advice to determine if it would be possible to produce a printed version of Irregular Webcomic without running afoul of the LEGO corporate behemoth. It appears that the answer was affirmative, given the announcement today:
  

  I have started work to have collections of Irregular Webcomic! strips printed in book format, for purchase.

  Boom. That’s the sound of perhaps the longest-running webcomic without a print collection (going on thirteen years old) giving its readers what they want. Given a deep archive filled with interleaved storylines, Morgan-Mar opted out of the sequential approach, and will be going with a themed collection:

  The first book will collect all of the Fantasy theme strips up to the hiatus period which began with strip #3198. By my count, that’s 504 strips. With some bonus material, we’re estimating about 140 pages.

  Smart move, by the way — grabbing the first 500 or so strips in IW history would require readers to hop between fourteen different storylines, and not get much resolution on any of them. Also, I’ll note that the Fantasy theme probably makes the least use of actual LEGO assets¹ (other than the Me theme), as the main characters are painted RPG miniatures and not LEGO minifigs; the branded building bricks are used more for backgrounds, props, sets, and side characters. Having less prominent LEGO stuff in the LEGO-themed comic is probably a safe move from a legal standpoint, at least to start.

  Morgan-Mar is presently working with the wonderful folks at Make That Thing, with plans to launch the requisite Kickstarter around the first of the year so as to avoid the holiday confusion (not to mention the tax implications of making a bunch of money in 2015 but not spending it until 2016). I’ll keep you appraised of any future developments, but I will say that this exciting news. Very exciting.

• Speaking of unreasonably large Kickstarted books from longtime webcomickers, Ryan North officially finished the last stretch goal of the To Be Or Not To Be campaign: he made a pizza that looked like Kate Beaton’s Hamlet portrait and ate it. And then, because he is a Ryan-sized man and has prodigious hunger, he also made one that looked like Beaton’s Ophelia and then ate it, too.

  There was a third pizza².

  This third pie resembled Beaton’s take on Juliet, and with that, North announced the sequel to TBONTB, the long-rumo[u]red Romeo and/or Juliet. Key points: the book will not be crowdfunded, but rather published by Riverhead Books, a division of Penguin. As a result, a hard release date can be promised (7 June 2016), the book is in a final form (no stretch goals), and will feature 400 pages and (by my count) ninety friggin’ artists providing illustrations. I ain’t typing out the list but you can find a copy/paste of it below the cut.

  Oh, and let me point out this one line near the bottom of the announcement:

  I can’t say more about the book JUST YET, but I will say this: as someone who has backed the original Kickstarter and is also awesome, be sure to hold on to your preorder email receipt. For SURPRISES :0 [emphasis original]

  Done, and done!

• Still on Kickstarted books, the TJ & Amal omnibus got a nice writeup today at The AV Club, and not to do with Kickstarted books at all, yesterday’s Nick Trujillo news has revealed itself: Glitched is running as a Twitter account, and appears to make use of the new polling feature. IN-teresting.

Spam of the day:

You have missed messages vindication Cordially Skype+ service

Weird, it’s almost like I’m being invited to click on links of unknown provenance by services that I don’t use.

_______________
¹ Or maybe the Space theme, for similar reasons.

² cf: Ryan-sized man.

(more…)

So much exciting news today, you guys. So very, very much.

• The Race Is On! The first four Scott C paintings (cf: here) have been released into the wild, and residents of Monterey, New York, somewhere in London I guess, and Toronto have been scrambling to find the treasure.

  Follow C’s twitterfeed to learn which ones have been claimed (there was a person that missed the Ghostbusters painting by seven minutes, but got to meet Mr C as a bonus), and keep an eye on Slashfilm and Great Showdowns for the rest of the week to learn about the remaining 21 paintings up for grabs.

• The Reviews Are In! Jorge Cham’s second tie-in movie — titled The PhD Movie 2, appropriately enough — has garnered its first major-media review in the pages of the New York Times. Okay, it’s the Education section, not the film section, and it’s less a review, more of an abstract, but when was the last time something you wrote got quoted in the Times, Mr or Ms Smartypants? For the record, I’m not a postdoc and I sound Statistically speaking, you’re three times more likely to get cancer than you are to get a grant funded by the NIH to cure cancer to be pretty damn amusing.
• The Wait Is Killing Me! Nick Trujillo made an impression in his too-short time in competition on Strip Search; he romped all over the immunity challenges for the first couple of days before being double-eliminated with Mackenzie Schubert on Day 4 and, uh, spoilers for a web series that ran more than two years ago.

  Nick’s getting ready to launch a brand new comic sometime today, but first he’s busy letting us all know he’s got to do work stuff and leaving us hanging for the time being which is building up the anticipation and attention. Well played, Trujillo, congratulations for getting us to fall into your little trap.

• Aaaaahhhhh! Fat Pony plushes are now available for purchase. I repeat, a niece who loved the crap out of The Princess and the Pony at her birthday is going to really enjoy Christmas. She’s a bit young to worry about things like what day of the week it is, but if you need a calendar for 2016, Beaton and the Pony have you covered there, too.

Spam of the day:

Looking for the ultimate way to experience GIANTS Software’s blockbuster Farming Simulator 2015 Gold Edition?

You guys, this is amazing. It’s less spam and more press release, but some company thinks that farm equipment driving simulation games are going to be so massively popular that they have produced a specialized controller bundle that goes for US$299. They want to send me a review unit.

Must be the incipient Halloween, when the dead walk, but we’ve got some revivals to mention today.

Let us note that a new A Softer World may be found today, on the topic of Halloween. Second, the Cartoon Art Museum (which, as we noted recently, is not so much gone as couch-surfing until it finds its own place again) announced that it will be at a new Disney fan event, Mouse-Con, on 15 November in Concord, CA.

But the big news is twofold.

Firstly, the long-hiatused Achewood sees a return of sorts today. Specifically, the Achewood in-character blogs, which have been on hiatus more than two years¹, see a new post from Peter “Nice Pete” Cropes². It is a meditation on life, death, the passage of time, Meyer lemon curd, and gluten-free pastry. It is the best thing that you could possibly read today, unless you scrolled down through Nice Pete’s archives to rediscover his thoughts on the topic of Rachael Ray.

And secondly, that Homestar Runner’s annual Halloween cartoon is out and — as usual — the costumes are excellent as well as being deep cuts. I’d say my favorite is probably Homestar himself as [spoiler — see below the cut], The Cheat as [spoiler], or The Poopsmith as [spoiler].

Happy Halloween (early), don’t forget to turn your clocks back this weekend (USA only) and remember to change the batteries in your smoke detectors. See you all on Monday.

Spam of the day:

Dear Sir/Ma, September 2015 Invoice is yet to be paid and we are sending you a reminder. Attached is September Invoice #7446-483 kindly review and have this settled.

That’s odd, I don’t remember doing business with an anonymous company in Lithuania. Let me just click on this completely innocuous document link so I can clear this up!

_______________
¹ Last strip update: 7 April 2014. Last blog updates: Emeril, 12 May 2006; Lil’ Nephew and Lyle, 4 May 2008; Molly, 29 July 2008; Ray, 12 December 2008; Cornelius Bear, 4 April 2009; Pat, 6 April 2009; Téodor, 16 July 2012; Roast Beef, 25 October 2013.

² Nice Pete last updated on 6 October 2013.

(more…)

Lots of book news today at Fleen Central. Let’s get stuck in.

• Okay, big disclaimer up front: KB Spangler is a great friend of mine, I did the foreword for the first collection of her comic, and I’ve been an alpha reader of each of her novels, so take what I’m about to say with however large a grain of salt as you think it deserves.

  Her latest novel, Greek Key releases today in paperback and various electronic formats, and it is friggin’ fantastic — hardly a surprise, given her prodigious skills as a professional editor. She’s got a sharp way with words, the ability to make sudden plot twists look obvious in retrospect, and a completely new take on the myth of Helen of Troy that took my breath away¹.

  If you read her webcomic, this story will fill in bits of the underlying mythology in ways that you will appreciate; if you don’t read her webcomic², everything you need to know will be recapped for you in a natural way and you’ll enjoy a damn good story on its own. Get on this one now.

• Not released, but well into the print pipeline, Ananth Hirsh was kind enough to share pages from the proofs of Lucky Penny over on his Tumblr. There’s cover shots, under the dustjacket of the hardcover shots, interior pages with new shading shots, and even some wet proof shots. This is gonna be one pretty book.
• Just starting its journey to print, the new edition of Shadoweyes by Sophie Campbell (known these days for her work on the comic of Jem & the Holograms) is now Kickstarting under the auspices of Iron Circus Comics, aka kicker-of-all-asses [C] Spike [Trotman]. Slave Labor Graphics published an earlier edition way back in 2010, but this one will be nearly twice as long and in color, so even those that are familiar with the story will likely want to check it out with an eye towards ordering.

  This’ll be the third Kickstart of the year³ for Spike and the fourth of the past year (Poorcraft: Wish You Were Here wrapped in mid-December 2014), with two more due before the end of the the year. That’s a level of work that would kill most people, but Spike is not most people — she’s the people that was always told that she couldn’t make comics the way she was, and couldn’t make a living doing the things she was doing, and decided to the best way to get the naysayers to shut the hell up forever would be to work hard and just friggin’ do those things.

  Naturally, those people now all bitch and moan that she’s somehow cheating, because it’s obvious that you can’t possibly succeed the way she has. Here’s a quick note for the bitchers and moaner — keep it up. Spike finds your anguish to be absolutely delicious.

  Anyway, Shadoweyes is just shy of 50% of the way to goal just shy of 23 hours after launch; the early bird rewards are all gone, but there’s plenty of comic goodness still to be had.

• The greatest art hunt in comics kicks off on Monday, taking place across a week, 19 cities, and five countries as Scott C celebrates the debut of the latest Great Showdowns collection by hiding (or arranging the hiding of) small paintings inspired by popular films in locations where the films took place, starting Monday 2 November and ending Sunday 8 November.

  Announcements as to which scenes are depicted (and thus which location to search) will be made on io9 on Monday, Slashfilm the rest of the week, as well as at Great Showdowns (and presumably C’s twitterfeed). Keep your eyes on the sites and then get searching!

Spam of the day:

The Best of: Sexy Fish

Thought I’d left something out from the headline, didn’t you?

_______________
¹ She’s also big into footnotes. I’m telling you, she’s the whole package.

² Also, what the hell is wrong with you?

³ Following TJ & Amal omnibus (now nearing the end of fulfillment) and New World (which suffered from the bane of anthologies — late submissions — but will be shipping in the coming weeks).